Tales From The Los Angeles Institute
by Jillessa Heronstairs
Summary: This is a series of short one-shot stories starring Emma, Julian, and the the rest of the Dark Artifices characters.
**So I have a series like this for both The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices, So I figured, why not make one for The Dark Artifices? I hope you enjoy. :) More Dark Artifice Stories to come, once I get enough tome to finish the book. ;)
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 **A Little Snack**

Emma was standing on her bed, trying to reach the dagger that was stuck in her ceiling. Her anger had gotten the best of her again, and to relieve it, she had thrown the knife upwards. Now she was just more angry, because she couldn't reach it, and she wanted to get it back.

"Why am I so short?" she wondered aloud, straining to get those couple more inches that separated her fingers from the hilt of the knife. It was impossible. She looked around her room, for something she could knock the dagger down with, but she saw nothing.

She stood on her tippy-toes, but she was still sinking into the mattes of her bed, and she was an inch too short to reach it.

What she wanted to do was to jump on the bed. Surely she would be able to reach it then, but she had jumped on an old bed once, and the frame had cracked in half when she landed. No. She would not go through that again.

"Emma?" a voice said from outside her door, "Can I come in?"

She would know the voice anywhere. It was the voice of her best friend, Julian Blackthorn.

"Yeah," she called, "come in,"

Her door opened and he walked in. His hair was a mess, as usual, and he had a mischievous glint in his eyes, "Hey Emma, do you want to-what are you doing?"

Emma sighed. "I was mad at myself, so I threw a knife at the ceiling. I can't reach it now."

"Oh, here. Let me get that for you," Julian hopped onto the bed and easily pulled the knife from its place in the wall. He was a couple inches taller, plus his arms were longer, so it wasn't that much of an accomplishment for him.

"Thanks," Emma replied, "So what did you come in here to ask?"

"Oh. I was wondering if you'd like to come downstairs and have a midnight snack with me."

She grinned. She and Julian were always up for food, as were his four siblings, and the kitchen was always well stocked.

"Should we get the others?" Emma asked, twirling the dagger in her fingers as they walked to the kitchen. She dropped it off in the training room on the way.

"No. They're all sleeping. I was too, but then I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, and I realized that I was hungry." he grinned, and pushed his messy hair back from his face.

Emma watched as he did this. He was so atttactive, yet he seemed to not care about looks, or didn't notice that he had them. Whenever they went out, and happened to pass by a friend, if it was a girl, they would flirt with him. Though Julian rarely took the bait, Emma couldn't help feeling a bit jealous. She knew he would never leave her. They had been best friends since babies, had done everything together over the years, but sometimes she found herself wishing they were more than best friends.

Selfish, she told herself. And wrong. They were going to become parabatai. A romantic relationship would be forbidden, though she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like. To be more than friends.

"Hey. You okay?" she heard Julian ask. She snapped back to reality. They were in the kitchen, and Julian was looking at her, concerned.

"Yeah. I'm fine. I was just thinking," she replied.

"About what?"

"About what I wanted to eat for snack," she hated to lie to Julian, but she also felt like telling him the truth right then would not have helped either.

"What do you?" Julian asked, opening a cupboard and taking out two dishes. He handed one to Emma and kept one for himself.

She smiled brightly, "A little of everything."

"I agree with that," Julian said, and they went to work pulling anything junk food related out of the cabinets, fridge, and freezer.

Julian admired the way Emma moved around the kitchen. She was swift on her feet, and it reflected how good of a shadowhunter she was. She was also very pretty, he realized. Her long blonde hair was collected in a messy braid, and it was coming apart. He longed to reach out and touch it, to feel the softness of it. Her eyes were very nice too, as was the rest if her face. She was also one of the few girls that he knew that didn't constantly bother him or talk about her weight. Emma ate whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.

The counter was soon filled with various ice creams, desserts, candies, cookies, potato chips, and chocolate syrup. They quickly got to work at scooping a little bit of everything on to their plates. When they were finished, they looked at the dishes. Each was a mound of different foods. Julian grabbed two spoons from the silverware drawer, and handed one to Emma.

"How are we supposed to eat this?" Emma said, gazing at the masterpiece she had created. A record winning midnight snack, she thought.

"Just dig in," was Julian's reply.

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 **Let me know what you guys want to see in upcoming chapters! I am open to any suggestions. :)**

 **~Jillessa Heronstairs~**


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